The Grapes of Wrath

"My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . . ."
- Steinbeck in a 1938 letter

The copy of The Grapes of Wrath that I have from the library has a really long introduction. I didn't read the whole thing, but read some of it. Two things in the introduction left an impression on me.

1. The title comes from the 2nd line of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by in 1861 and published in 1862 by Julia Ward Howe, after visiting a Union army camp during the Civil War. The Hymn has been used in many forms, often adapted for churches. Julia Ward Howe was actually a Unitarian Universalist. Here is her first manuscript version:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the wine press, where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watchfires of an hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.

I have read a burning Gospel writ in fiery rows of steel,
As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal,
Let the hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Our God is marching on.

He has sounded out the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He has waked the earth's dull sorrow with a high ecstatic beat,
Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the whiteness of the lilies he was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that shines out on you and me,
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
Our God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, he is succour to the brave,
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave,
Our God is marching on.

2. Steinbeck wrote in his journal about the book:

"If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. I'll just have to work fro a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain. . . . If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way i do. I am pushing against it all the time."